Electrical installer, contractor, and ZynexGroup: Who does what on the construction site?

When an industrial BESS (battery energy storage system) is to be installed on a company's land, there is rarely only one company on site. There is excavation and concrete pouring to do, cables to pull and switchboards to establish, and dialogue with the grid company and the municipality. A recurring source of confusion is who actually commissions whom, and who is responsible for what on the construction site itself. For a decision-maker who is about to sign, that is a fair question: How many suppliers does the company itself have to find and manage, and what does it remain responsible for?

This article describes the role split on the construction site: what we at ZynexGroup handle, what an authorised electrical installer and a contractor each carry out, and what the customer contributes. The aim is to make clear who commissions whom, so the decision-maker knows what a turnkey process covers and where the boundaries lie. The physical preparatory work with foundation, fire, and groundwater, and the grid connection application itself, each have their own article in the guide, so the focus here is on the parties and their responsibilities.

ZynexGroup: project management and the party that commissions the others

The core of a turnkey process is that one party ties the others together. Our role is project management: we deliver the hardware and the software that monitors the system, and we coordinate the professionals who carry out the physical work. We also lead the dialogue with the grid company, the municipality, and Energinet (Denmark's national transmission system operator) and apply for the relevant permits.

Central to the question of who commissions whom is that it is we who enter into the agreements with the third parties the project requires, and who pay them. Payment for the electrical installer, the contractor, and the other parties is included in the project price as a starting point, unless otherwise agreed in the contract. The customer therefore does not have to obtain quotes from a contractor, find an authorised electrical installer, or keep track of when each of them is to arrive on site. A large part of the value in a turnkey process is precisely that the company does not itself have to assemble and manage the individual parties.

There is one point worth being precise about. That we coordinate and pay the professionals does not change the fact that the legal roles as owner and client (bygherre) remain with the customer, while the practical management sits with us. Throughout the process, the company also has one fixed contact person with us from the first enquiry, so that the same person knows the project from the initial dialogue through to ongoing coordination on site.

The electrical installer: switchboard, cables, electrical panel, and the technical dialogue with the grid

The electrical installer handles the electrical part of the system. That covers switchboard work, cables, and often the establishment of a new electrical panel that connects the system to the local electricity grid and can disconnect the connection safely. On top of that comes the local grid connection itself.

That it is an electrical installer, and not just any tradesperson, is not a detail. Work on fixed electrical installations may only be carried out by an authorised electrical installation company, which must have a professionally responsible person and an approved quality management system. The electrical part can therefore be carried out by neither the customer nor us; it must sit with a company that holds the right authorisation. That is why the electrical installer is an independent party in the process.

The electrical installer also has a specific role towards the grid company, and it is here that some of the confusion about "who commissions whom" arises. When a connection is to be established or changed, it is an electrical installer who contacts the grid company, carries out the practical work, and creates and reports the case as completed in the grid company's system. The installer's completion report is the customer's documentation that the work has been carried out correctly under the law, and it is also the electrical installer who, on behalf of the customer, agrees with the grid company when the meter is to be installed. The electrical installer therefore acts on the customer's behalf in the technical dialogue, but it is still the customer who is the system owner. The detailed application process with the grid company is described in its own article in the guide; here the point is only who carries it out.

The contractor: foundation, excavation, and the physical site

The contractor handles the heavy civil works on the plot. That is the excavation, the cast foundation, preparation of the area, and the physical containment lining under and around the system that collects liquid in the event of a fire. An industrial battery system is heavy and must stand stably throughout its lifetime, and for that reason the foundation is a piece of civil work that is typically carried out first, so that it is cured and ready when the modules arrive.

The contractor's work is described in more detail in the guide's article on the physical preparatory work, where the requirements for foundation, fire conditions, and groundwater protection are also covered. In this context, the contractor is first and foremost the second professional party on site alongside the electrical installer, and it is that interplay that makes coordination on the construction site a task in its own right.

Responsibility on the construction site itself when several professionals are there at the same time

As soon as more than one company is on site at the same time, for example a contractor and an electrical installer, a responsibility arises to coordinate safety between them. That is not specific to battery systems, but a general rule for construction and civil works. When at least two companies are to work on a construction site at the same time, the client has the responsibility for ensuring that cooperation on occupational health and safety between the companies is coordinated, so that the work can be carried out safely. In practice that means that an occupational health and safety coordinator must be appointed, who coordinates the work in the shared areas and determines which companies are responsible for the shared safety measures.

Two things are worth noting here. One is that the client is the party who pays to have the work designed and carried out, and that the construction site covers the entire work area including associated storage, site hut, and access areas. The other is that the client does not have direct responsibility for the safety of individual employees, unless the client is also their employer; that responsibility sits with each company for its own people. For a company that is having a BESS installed, it is precisely that type of coordination we handle in practice, so that the professionals work in the right sequence and the shared conditions on site are agreed in advance. The scope of the duties depends on the size of the site and the number of people, and that is one of the reasons those conditions are clarified early in the process.

The customer's role: requirements, access, and a plot that can be built on

The customer's contribution is less visible, but it is a precondition for the process to begin at all. It consists of three parts.

• Requirements and preferences: The customer defines what the system must be able to do, and provides input on where on the plot it is placed. The desired placement is clarified in the initial dialogue and forms part of the assessment of whether the system can be built legally.
• Access and safety on their own land: The customer gives the professionals access to the site and, as owner of the land, has an interest in conditions on site being in order. It is also the customer who, as system owner, stands as owner of the system itself, and of the service cable, that is the cable that connects the system to the grid's connection point.
• A plot that can be built on legally: It is the building owner who has the responsibility for complying with the relevant laws in connection with construction, and a placement must therefore fit within the frameworks that apply to the address. We prepare and lead the dialogue with the authorities, but the legal right to build on the plot is tied to the owner.

In practice, the customer finds most of these requirements straightforward, because the work has been done in advance. But the boundary is worth knowing: the formal owner and client roles stay with the customer, even though we coordinate the parties who carry out the work.

The authorities stand outside the site, but set the frameworks

Beyond the parties who physically work on the plot, there are two authorities whose decisions set the framework. The grid company owns and operates the local electricity distribution network and decides on the grid connection. The municipality is the building authority: it is the individual municipality that processes building cases and issues a building permit, and the municipality can set local frameworks via a local plan (lokalplan). We prepare and handle the dialogue with both and apply for the relevant permits, but we cannot make the decisions ourselves, and we therefore also cannot guarantee either a grid approval or a building permit in advance. In the connection process, system owner, electrical installer, and grid company each have their own responsibilities and drive the case forward together, and our task is to coordinate that interplay.

Limitations and preconditions

The role split presupposes that there is something to coordinate. In the standard model as a turnkey process, built around a minimum of two modules, we handle the full coordination of professionals and authorities. A company can in principle buy a single module without the full package, but that is a narrower product where the customer handles a larger share themselves, including market participation, and where we deliver operating documentation rather than the overall coordinated process. The two tracks are not the same, and that affects how much the customer must handle themselves.

There are also limits to what coordination can remove. The legal roles as owner and client remain with the customer, and the authorities' decisions sit outside both our and the customer's control. We can prepare the basis thoroughly and manage the sequence on site, but we cannot guarantee a particular processing time or a particular outcome with the grid company and the municipality. If the system is also to function as backup power or secure critical loads, that is a separate decision with its own technical design, which is described from a production-security angle elsewhere in our material.

Overall perspective

On a construction site for an industrial BESS, four roles have to work together. We at ZynexGroup handle project management and commission and pay the third parties the project requires. The electrical installer carries out the electrical part, which only an authorised company may touch, and is the customer's technical representative towards the grid company. The contractor handles foundation, excavation, and the physical site. And the customer contributes requirements, access, and a plot that can be built on legally, and remains the formal owner and client. When several professionals are on site at the same time, their work must be coordinated, and that is the task a turnkey process brings together under one party. A company that knows the role split from the outset knows exactly what it remains responsible for, and what it can leave to others.

Have the potential for your facility assessed

If you are considering an industrial BESS, the role split is part of what becomes concrete when a project gets underway: who carries out what on your land, and what you yourselves contribute. We use your grid connection, consumption profile, and historical consumption data for an initial assessment of whether there is a match, and for a data-based dialogue about the next steps, including how a construction process would realistically look at your site. You are welcome to contact us here.